


flush of the known universe

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Alternating, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-05-21 15:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14917751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: Junkrat and Roadhog are smugglers who deliver kyber crystals to a certain Dr. O’deorain. They don't ask questions. They never do, until they find him.Title and chapter names are from Walt Whitman’s “I sing the body electric.”





	1. belongings of my or your body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING/SPOILER: junkrat has hardware in his head that retains memories of its previous owner. most prominently of having a child. he was never pregnant himself, but if you're dysphoric it could be uncomfortable to read.

The metal transplant in Jamison’s head likes to dream independently from him. It isn’t necessary for him to be asleep when it happens. Sometimes he forgets how to count. Sometimes he wakes up twitching and frothing at the mouth.

Besides the seizures and the sporadic fits of narcolepsy, it’s surprisingly functional for back alley hardware. Even his organs are made of spare parts. He can’t recall what bits of grey matter got blown out in the first place, but his reflexes are better.

Maybe? He thinks so. He thinks he’s asleep right now, but he can never be too sure. As he lays in bed, the transplant tries to remember sensations from the body it used to belong to. The implant in the skin of his upper arm regulates his testosterone levels so he doesn’t get a rush of postpartum progesterone.

He can smell his infant daughter’s warm little head, and then he’s smothered by the hot fumes of ion cannons. He’s dreaming. He’s remembering something. He’s having a mild seizure again.

The cantina is a haze of smoke, filled with voices as low as the hum of a starship engine. A flickering hologram band plays on the stage. Across the room, an angry patron calls out in a series of tongue clicks and vowels. Seconds later comes the sound of a table being flipped and cards scattering.

A Twi’lek waitress, tray balanced against her hip, calmly steps around the scene. The Trandoshan next to Jamison gives her a hand signal she evidently recognizes, and she turns in the other direction, away from them and their whispered conversation.

“The queen has agreed to your terms,” the Trandoshan hisses around a wad of strong-smelling tobacco.

“Ain’t that splendid!” Jamison hears himself say. “Now be straight with me, mate. How long will the, ah, transaction take place?”

The Trandoshan spits on the floor. There is no floor. The walls are gone. Synapses fire like a little pistol with the barrel to his skull. Jamison starts to choke on his tongue but then he convulses so hard that he ends up in the fetal position, drooling on his pillow.

The light is dim and dirty like the sun seen through whiskey glass. Sweaty bodies, their mouths open and screaming in some primate triumph, crowd around the ring. There’s no real authority here, only the struggle for it. The sweet-sour stench of blood and booze pervades the air in the Scrapyard like a disease.

It takes two red-faced men to carry him into the ring because he goes limp, refusing to walk. They push him through the crowd and into the ring. His hair is greasy and unwashed because it’s two in the fucking morning. He hasn't been allowed to shower yet. Or eat. Or see his daughter.

His opponent is a big man, seven and fuck you feet tall. No jawline, only soft flesh that continues chin to double chin. His muscles are sheened yellow under the liquor glow. His forearms bulge as he flexes, testing the strength of the chains. Fresh meat, then. A name comes to him, _Mako, Mako._ It doesn’t mean anything yet.

Primal fear beats inside his ribs like a child crying in her crib. They can hear each other thinking the same thing. They look at each other for a second too long. And then they turn on the crowd.

The seizure finally passes. He can hear his eyelids when he blinks and smell his own stale sweat. For a moment he doesn’t move, and then he jams his pinky finger into his ear and twists it around.

He calls out, “Oi! Are we there yet?”

Mako’s voice from the cockpit. “Egghead wants us to come down.”

“Whassat?”

His feet touch the floor. They’ve arrived at Oasis.


	2. all is a procession

They dock at the hangar above Oasis as usual, but this time, after the cargo is inspected, they’re ushered into a shuttle and flown to the surface. Their weapons are confiscated, but Mako is certain that Jamison is packing a few grenades and concussion mines, quite literally.

He senses how nervous Jamison is, and he’s just as uncomfortable. Yet there’s something underneath the surface, tight as a muscle cramp. If his neural interface is rejecting the hardware again - they’ll discuss it later. For now, he keeps his hand on Jamison’s knee and lets him rest against his shoulder.

The inside of the shuttle reminds him of a clinic. No matter where they go in the galaxy, they can’t escape waiting rooms. When he closes his eyes, he can almost smell the synthetic bacta and see Jamison with blood coming out of his nose and ears like his brain has been liquified, so he doesn’t blink. Focus, focus. Try not to remember.

Instead Mako looks out the viewport. Oasis is a spiral of arches and domes, sloping roofs and curving walls. It sits in an impact crater, surrounded by a shield made of blue light like blown glass. The transmitter, a shimmering tower in the center of a golden city, lets the Empire know it hasn’t collapsed yet.

Outside the shield, a thin azure membrane keeping death at an arm’s length, the atmosphere seethes with carbon dioxide. Geysers belch out gases that touch the clouds and turn into fire. Dust storms cover the horizon with a chemical spill of colors - red, yellow, orange, and flashes of green when lightning strikes the shield.

In the distance, great red columns rise like stalagmites formed by slow bloodletting. Five of the seven natural satellites appear as white rings in the sky. On rare occasions when the hemisphere aligns precisely, the hot throbbing boil of the sun can be seen through the storms.

The blinking blue sensors around the perimeter of the impact crater observe all of this and silently record the data. They monitor the wind patterns, temperature fluctuations, traces of methane in the air. And under everything, Oasis is clean, cold, beautiful, untouched.

Before they pass through the shield, Mako looks back at the hangar. He mentally goes through the available escape routes and possible casualties. None of them are acceptable because they include Jamison. Even if they did manage to escape, the Empire would freeze their credits and blacklist them from imperial clinics. They’ve got treasure buried in five different galaxies, but it always comes back to the eternal question - how long could they run?

Jamison says softly, “Got a bad feeling about this, mate.”

“Good.” Mako’s mouth barely moves. “Me too.”

A dozen stormtroopers, their armor bronzed by dust, wait on the platform below. Mako and Jamison don't have time to gawk; they're quickly escorted through giant amber doors and into the facility. A droid follows them with a cybernated hum, cleaning up the dirt and scuff marks.

Everything feels like it was designed to make them uncomfortable, especially Dr. O’Deorain’s office. The artificial lights are too bright. Blueprints and anatomy charts, filled with neat handwritten notes, are tacked on the walls. Rubbery coils of surgical tubing and large sheets of paper covered in complex diagrams are loosely strewn throughout the room. As the stormtroopers file out of the door, their reflections are distorted in the tanks holding yellow and purple liquid.

"It'd be a fine sight to blow those thingies up. You think they're explosive? I got a sixth sense for that. Definitely explosive," says Jamison. "I wanna watch this whole place go up in a mushroom cloud."

"At a safe distance."

"Yeah, yeah, you know me. I'm safe. I don't carry droid poppers in me undies, nope, not at all. I'm always safe."

Minutes pass in silence, except for Jamison's nervous laughter at nothing and the rhythmic breathing of machinery.

“I gotta take a leak,” Jamison blurts out. “Real bad.”

“Be quick about it.”

Jamison squeezes his hand and then limps away, deeper into the rows of tanks, until Mako can't hear the distinct sound of his prosthetic leg on the durasteel floors. He misses him already.

A door across the room opens with a soft dramatic hiss and a woman appears. She looks vaguely Mandalorian, with high cheekbones and a hard jawline. Her eyes meet Mako’s and then move swiftly around the room, searching.

He waits for her to speak first. She doesn’t have to introduce herself.

Dr. O’deorain says, “Where’s your partner?”

“Bathroom.”

“Ah.” She gives him a thin smile that disappears as soon as he notices. “Give me a moment.”

She picks up a clipboard and flips through the pages. She makes a few notes, mumbling under her breath. Mako stands and waits. He catches a few words he recognizes - _kyber, midichlorians, nanobots._

“Alright." She raises her voice, looking at the clipboard and not at him. “I suppose you have some questions, Mr. Rutledge.”


	3. all is a procession pt. 2

He's chosen so many names in his life and had just as many chosen for him. Mako Rutledge is, at least, better than the one the Scrapyard gave him. _Roadhog._ Almost as ridiculous as _Junkrat._

Names are histories, and both are always changing. It wasn't too long ago that Mako was a man with neither, sleeping on a wooden pallet in an abandoned warehouse. The Empire destroyed his homeland, and then his people destroyed themselves. For money, for glory, and sometimes just for fun.

Maybe it wasn't too long ago either that people walked this land, breathed in the clean air, took food and water for granted, spoke a language no one remembers. Someone will give this Oasis another name, and someone will kill them and remake it again. And again.

When he looks at Dr. O’deorain, he sees an empire about to fall. He wonders if she knows. He wonders how he knows.

O’deorain pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales. She says, “Listen, you're not under arrest. You're still getting paid. The credits have already been transferred to your account. I’m authorized to answer any relevant questions you may have about your, ah, _visit_ to our facility. Do you understand?”

He has only two questions on his mind - where's Jamison, and does this office even have a bathroom? He remains silent and waits for O’deorain to reveal more. 

She gives Mako another tight-lipped smile and crosses something out on her clipboard. Then, turning her back on him, she touches a button on the wall and a hologram fills the room.

It's the schematics for Jamison’s hardware.

“I've brought you here today,” she begins, “because your partner, Jamison Fawkes, is the perfect candidate for my experimental treatment.”

When he finally speaks, he says, “Why?”

“Because he needs it.”

Mako closes the distance between them in seconds. He lowers his face until he can discern the blemishes on her nose and the skin oil in the crease of her eyelids. His breath makes her stray hairs flutter like a heartbeat.

_“Why?"_

She looks mildly annoyed, not intimidated, when she says, “He needs it, doesn't he? According to my calculations, he won't have long to live if he doesn't seek medical attention for his previous injuries.”

She makes a gesture and the hologram cycles through neurological prototypes. Nothing they could ever afford, even with this Empire gig.

“I believe your partner has an above average midichlorian count. This is crucial for the treatment process. I can prevent further brain damage from his defective hardware, if let me. No charge. Just let me -”

At that moment, the tanks explode.


	4. curious sympathy one feels

Jamison’s had better days than this. It's not his worst, but it's no honeymoon-slash-heist in Canto Bight, either. He's got a throbbing pain behind his eyes and his mouth tastes like, well, _mouth._ But in an uncomfortable way, where he's too aware of the dry swipe of his tongue over his cracked lips.

His hardware reacts strongly as soon as they enter Dr. O’deorain’s office. Already he can feel another seizure coming on, so he makes up an excuse about the bathroom. They vowed till death do us part but he doesn't want Mako to see him like this. He wants a nice, quiet corner to suffer a cerebral hemorrhage in.

Childhood tinnitus fills the silence as he wanders through the rows and rows of tanks. Then, slowly, the way toxic gas kills the unaware - he begins to hear something. The liquid azoth sloshes and lymph nodes swell to a primeval melody. They speak, and he follows.

He stands in front of a tank as it sings like kyberite in a deep cave. There's a man floating inside with tubes connecting to his back and a breathing apparatus obscuring his face. Even so, Jamison can feel the intensity of his gaze as a voice cracks like ice, _You look like you’ve seen a ghost._

Jamison grins like a stressed animal baring his teeth. “Shouldn’t be nosing around where I don’t get paid to nose around, I know - ”

_You can hear me?_

“Yeah, so?”

_You must be strong in the Force._

When he was a knobby-kneed child, Jamison knew things. He knew where the birds would build their nests before they flew down from the mountains. He knew where treasure would be buried before it was stolen in the first place. As the haze of nuclear radiation seeped through the Scrapyard and made the land barren, those coincidences kept him alive.

“Dunno what I have to do with all that mumbo-jumbo. Hey, mate, d’ya know where the bathroom is?”

The man brings himself closer to the glass, close enough for Jamison to see the nails driving the breathing apparatus into his skull. _Run. Get out of here. RUN._


	5. curious sympathy one feels pt. 2

_I was a man named Gabriel Reyes. Now the creature you see, the creature I have become - its name is the Dark Lord Reaper._

“Ever been to Straya? Irradiated little mudball. I’ve heard that name at the Scrapyard. Yeah, yeah, sure I did. Or was it Death Lord? Ugly fucker, but made a fine cuppa -”

_Listen and look at me! This is the fate that awaits you. Don’t trust Moira._

“That sheila,” Jamison says, feeling a twinge in his hardware, “who hires us to get those glowy rocks? I don’t trust Imperial, just their credits.”

_You don’t know what she’s doing with the kyber?_

“That’d be above my paygrade, mate.”

_Do you ever wonder how you find kyber so easily?_

“Never look a gift fathier in the mouth.”

_It calls to you, the kyber. As it calls to those who are sensitive to the Force and as it called to me. Moira was a pupil of Galen Erso, once. And I was a padawan on Coruscant, before... I fell, as only the most devout can fall. I needed power to bring justice to the galaxy, and I believed that Moira and her work could give me it. What you see now...”_ The purple and yellow liquid ripples around Reaper. _“... is her doing.”_

“So you’ve got magic powers. Got it.” Jamison taps the thick glass barrier separating him from the Reaper. “If that sheila’s so evil, then why don’t you just use those magic powers and break outta here?” 

_She has found a way to weaken my connection to the Force through the kyber crystals. Perhaps by channeling my strength into them. But I cannot say for sure how she does it. I am no polymath._

“Is there gonna be math? I'm not doing math.” 

_There is no escape for me, but there is hope for you yet. I sense another life force in her office. A man... you brought a man with you. Do you care for him? Then you will take him and yourself as far from here as you can._

“Is there anyone who cares about you?” 

It’s a simple question, spoken as casually as he would ask about the weather, but there’s no answer from Reaper. Jamison glances at the direction of Dr. O’deorain’s office, back at Reaper, and lets out a resigned sigh. 

Then he reaches into his pants and retrieves the concussion mines he hid in his underwear. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Straya is the name of their homeplanet because I’m clever.


	6. armies of those I love

The sound of the explosion reverberates like distant thunder during a Strayan radstorm, and the force of it knocks Dr. O’deorain against the far wall. Mako stands his ground as purple and yellow liquid floods her office in seconds and surges out the door into the rest of the facility. His skin tingles with both burning and numbing sensations when it comes into contact with the liquid.

He pushes against the current, shouting Jamison’s name. It had to be Jamison. No one else would be stupid enough to set off a mine in a high security Imperial base. If Jamison got himself killed, Mako is going to kill him twice for it.

A prosthetic hand emerges from the flood. As lights flash red and alarms being to screech, Jamison gives a thumbs up. Mako forces his way towards him until they can reach out and grab each other. Jamison, clinging to Mako’s arm, laughs and kisses him while the flood slowly subsides to an ankle-deep nuisance.

“What have you DONE?” Dr. O’deorain is soaking wet and shaking with rage. “I could have saved you! My life’s work -”

Sudden gunfire, two blasts - and she collapses again. A figure takes shape from a churning mass of shadows, and as soon as the mouth forms, words follows: _She’ll be fine._

“Don’t care,” grunts Mako.

Jamison says, “Do you promise?”

The figure takes Jamison’s face in his ink-oozing hands. _I do. And..._ The mouth touches Jamison’s. _Thank you. For caring about me._

“I’m flattered and all, mate, but, you know, I’m a married man - ”

The figure drifts towards Mako and kisses him as well. _And you, for bringing him here. I owe you - both of you - a great debt._

Mako looks to Jamison for an explanation, but he’s hobbling across the room towards Dr. O’deorain’s unconscious body. He crouches over her, a wild look in his eyes that Mako recognizes as the time to repair his thought circuits, and he says, “You sure she’s gonna be okay?”

_She has her own nanobots to rebuild herself._

Jamison takes her limp hand in his. “Mummy loves you very much,” he whispers.

The figure solidifies into a man, still dripping tendrils of mist but a man nonetheless. He walks over, naked, to Jamison. Mako notices how muscular his shoulders are while trying not to look lower down.

_We should leave. They will come for us._

Mako sometimes forgets how tall he is, but when Jamison straightens up, he’s reminded of his towering height.

“So you owe us a debt, huh?” He grins. One nostril slowly leaks blood like a broken faucet. “How about you buy us drinks when we get the hell out of here?”


	7. charge of the soul

His prosthetic becomes flesh as he walks in memories without content. Jamison can feel the torn ligaments in his foot like tangled fiberoptics, and the swollen ankle hurts when he puts weight on it, wincing in reflex at the phantom pain. When he sees his reflection in the sterile lab floor, he makes a sound like Mako’s oxygen mask.

His other self, the one that came with the scavenged metal transplant, has long red braids and joints that ache bitterly with arthritis, old injuries that flare up in the wintertime. She looks how he might have looked, if he never got his hormone implant. He may not know her name, but he knows her daughter’s, knows her as she lays in her flooded office and thrums with nanobots.

Nearby comes the plasma smell of standard issue blaster-fire like ozone. The Reaper moves through the stormtroopers with Mako at his side. The latter of the two is unarmed, but after years in the Scrapyard, he could put someone in a coma with his mean right hook.

A grenade arcs overhead, lands without being noticed, and halves the stormtrooper ranks when it explodes. Jamison, with dried blood in the crease between his nose and upper lip, shouts victoriously. More stormtroopers stampede towards the commotion, and Jamison hurls every last grenade and mine he kept in his underwear at them.

Impossibly enough, they make it out alive.

“Idiot’s luck,” Jamison calls it once they're back in their ship.

 _There are no coincidences in the Force,_ the Reaper promises him.

They leave Dr. O’deorain, her kyber crystals, and her experimental treatments behind in Oasis. The shield protects her, imprisons her. Her work continues as long as the Empire stands, which won’t be for very long.

They go on the run, together. Reaper directs them to a cybernetic grafter going by the moniker Sombra who repairs Jamison’s hardware, since he refuses to change it. He’s grown attached to the strange half-illusions, half-sensations. He just doesn’t want them to kill him, is all.

He still needs to take immunosuppressants so his body won’t reject his transplant or anything else important yet artificial, and money gets tight with a third mouth to feed. Fortunately, that third mouth - besides being great at kissing - comes with power. The Reaper swore to repay his debt to them, but truly, he desires only to be held by two men for the rest of his days.

He trains Jamison, who learns how to wield the natural affinity he has for engineering and the instincts he used to survive in the Scrapyard. Neither of them build lightsabers. The Reaper never wants to see another kyber crystal, and Jamison isn’t interested in any weapon that doesn’t have a casualty radius.

Someday, the Reaper will recognize himself as Gabriel Reyes again. The Empire will fall, with or without them, and their smuggling operations will be marginally affected. Someday, a disgraced Dr. O’deorain will recognize them in an Outer Rim Marketplace, under the dusty tarps and canopies. She’ll peer at the trio loitering between the stalls, and, for a moment, she’ll remember her mother. Someday, Jamison will recognize her, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if you don’t like this sudden ending. even though my interest in Overwatch has severely flagged, I was absolutely determined to finish this, no matter what. I wrote what I set out to write, a Star Wars AU that played with the theory that Jamison and Moira are related, and pushing it any further would just drain me. I’m happy with myself for going through with it to the end because I very rarely finish projects. thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
